Tara Zahra maintains in her article 'Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifferenceas a Category of Analysis' that many people in the early twentieth century were indifferent to the call of the national movements or oscillated between different national belongings. While finding Zahra's perspective relevant, this article criticizesthe choice of her central analytic concept,'national indifference,'and also questionsthe absence of an integrated gender perspective. Finally, the article queries the general applicability of her theoretical approach. While useful in the analysis of demotic national movements, it is considerably less so when studying elite minoritygroups. This becomes evident when Zahra's theoretical perspective is applied to the Baltic Germans.